a perpetual temptation to fall back into something below
our best possible. The impulsive mind is inevitably conservative; always
at the mercy of memorized images. Hence its delighted self-yielding to
traditional symbols, its uncritical emotionalism, its easy slip-back
into traditional and even archaic and self-contradictory beliefs: the
way in which it pops out and enjoys itself at a service of the hearty
congregational sort, or may even lead its unresisting owner to the
revivalists' penitent-bench.

But on the other hand, Creative Spirit is not merely conservative. The
Lord and Giver of Life presses forward, and perpetually brings novelty
to birth; and in so far as we are dedicated to Him, we must not make an
unconditional surrender to psychic indolence, or to the pull-back of the
religious past. We may not, as Christians, accept easy emotions in the
place of heroic and difficult actualizations: make external religion an
excuse for dodging reality, immerse ourselves in an exquisite dream, or
tolerate any real conflict between old cultus and actual living faith. A
most delicate discrimination is therefore demanded from us; the striking
of a balance between the rightful conservatism of the cultus and the
rightful independence of the soul. Yet, this is not to justify even in
the most advanced a wholesale iconoclasm. Time after time, experience
has proved that the attempt to approach God "without means," though it
may seem to describe the rare and sacred moments of the personal life of
the Spirit, is beyond the power of the mass of men; and even those who
do achieve it are, as it were, most often supported from behind by
religious history and the religious culture of their day. I do not think
it can be doubted that the right use of cultus does-increase religious
sensitiveness. Therefore here the difficult task of the future must be
to preserve and carry forward its essential elements, all the symbolic
significance, all the incorporated emotion, which make it one of man's
greatest works of art; whilst eliminating those features which are, in
the bad sense, conventional and no longer answer to experience or
communicate life.

Were we truly reasonable human beings, we should perhaps provide openly
and as a matter of course within the Christian frame widely different
types of ceremonial religion, suited to different levels of mind and
different developments of the religious consciousness. To some extent
this is already done: